Reading: Nehemiah
1:1-11
In Ezra and Nehemiah
which are really two halves of a whole, and they form one
narrative, there is a sense in which the whole can be
gathered up in three representative and symbolic things
which are found there in Jerusalem, namely, the Altar,
the House and the Wall. We may say that these three
things represent Jerusalem, for when you come to look at
the exercise of heart in Ezra and Nehemiah, it had its
outworking and its expression almost, if not entirely, in
connection with those three things. There were other
phases and features but they were all directed toward
these three things, the altar, the house and the wall.
These three occupied their attention and their energies
and so we may say that that is what is meant by
Jerusalem, and it was a matter of concern for Jerusalem
as gathered up in those three things. And when you ask
for the spiritual and New Testament meaning of Jerusalem,
the answer undoubtedly is that Jerusalem represents the
inclusiveness and fulness of Christ. We might trace that
right through the Word to very great profit. It is not
our intention to do so at the moment, but if you are in
need of a little bit of work with the Word at any time, I
would suggest to you that you study Jerusalem in that
light: the inclusiveness and fulness of Christ. And if
you want to hasten your study to a swift conclusion,
start in Revelation, for there the new Jerusalem, the
heavenly Jerusalem is undoubtedly the fulness of Christ.
When Nehemiah made his
enquiry he learned of the state of ruin in which
Jerusalem was. The altar was gone, the house had been
destroyed, and the wall was broken down, until Ezra
returned, replaced the altar, rebuilt the house, but
still there was an imperfect representation of Christ
there, and conditions were, therefore, unsatisfactory and
heartbreaking. The altar gone; that resulted in spiritual
defeat, for the altar was put in its place because fear
was upon the people because of the peoples round about,
so that the altar became the occasion of the removal of
their fear, the symbol of security, safety, deliverance,
victory, but the altar gone, spiritual defeat follows.
The house destroyed; then the heavenly life and
fellowship and fulness of the Lord's people have gone,
for the house comes in after the altar, as a heavenly
thing, by way of the cross, as that in which the Lord's
people have their fellowship and their fulness in
heavenly life. The wall broken down; then the testimony
of the fulness of Christ to the world has gone, and
Jerusalem is in ruins and the Lord's testimony in its
fulness as represented thereby is non-existent. The
result amongst the Lord's people is a state of servitude,
of that which represents a state of subjection to world
powers, dishonour, that is, a loss of dignity, shame and
reproach. And further, schism and strife amongst the
Lord's people, for this book reveals a good deal of that
amongst the Jews at Jerusalem and round about. And then
poverty; terrible poverty. You read it through again and
find how it was almost impossible for them to make ends
meet. These are the consequences of an altar gone, and a
house destroyed, and a wall broken down. They are always
the consequences of that which is typified thereby. In a
word, when the cross in the fulness of its meaning, is
out of place, then there is spiritual defeat amongst the
Lord's people. When the house, the truth of the House of
God, the church, the Body of Christ has been overlooked,
or ignored, or not apprehended and applied, the result is
that the heavenly life and heavenly fellowship, and
heavenly fulness have gone. And when the wall, the
testimony of the Lord's fulness to His people, is broken
down, then there is nothing to show to the world, the
testimony to the world is destroyed.
The result
for the Lord's people is that they are brought into a
state of servitude, and this is by far the greater
condition of Christian people today than the opposite.
Christianity is in servitude to the world. It is almost
going on its hands and knees to the world to allow it to
exist. It is doing everything it can in order to get the
favour of the world; it is in servitude, it is paying its
tithes to the world. Whenever you see a notice or an
advertisement about a sale, a whist drive or a bazaar, or
something like that, you know that there there is
servitude to the world, you know that the whole thing is
in bondage to the world, you know that that thing cannot
maintain itself in God, it can only maintain itself by
going to the world, and it is having to beg its very life
from the world; so much so that many Christian people are
coming to feel that it is far too expensive to belong to
a church, there are so many things to pay for. Oh, the
shame of that, the reproach to the Lord, the indignity,
the dishonour. And what about the strife and the schism
amongst the Lord's people; and the spiritual poverty;
that so few have anything to give of spiritual wealth and
means and riches, to others. This is because the cross,
in all its meaning of full victory and deliverance is not
in its place. The altar has gone. It is because the great
truth, the reality of the House of God, the Body of
Christ is not in operation; that leads to strife, that
leads to division and schism, that leads to spiritual
poverty. What is the opposite of spiritual poverty in
this connection? Why, an assembly constituted on the
principles of the Body of Christ in which everybody has
something to give. The opposite of that is a
congregation, with only one man preparing something day
after day to give to the people, and if that man should
fall sick there is not a soul in the congregation who can
take the service or give a message, so they must rush
round to find a preacher: the whole congregation is in
spiritual poverty without a fragment of food to give.
That is because the truth, the great truth of the House
of God is not in operation. Get that truth in and all
God's people are priests, and you all have something to
give. Are you in the good of the truth of the House of
God? Have you got spiritual riches and wealth? That is
Jerusalem as the Lord wants it to be: the fulness of
Christ.
And then
the wall follows, and the wall is the outward
circumferential expression of what is inside. That is,
within the wall is the fulness of Christ, and the
testimony of Christ as full satisfaction to His people is
given out to the world; this is the testimony to the
world that in Christ is full satisfaction. That is
Jerusalem. And that was Nehemiah's concern, and Ezra's
concern for Jerusalem, as they represented the complete
meaning of Jerusalem in the cross, and the house of God
and the testimony to the nations of the fulness of
Christ, by His cross in His House. But here it was not
so; the world was in the ascendency and Jerusalem was
submerged. The people of God were spiritually divided and
scattered. Now what we have here is the recovery, and
Ezra and Nehemiah dealt with that whole state of things
to recover the fulness of the Lord's testimony in
Jerusalem, and what they recovered was typically, the
fulness of Christ. And that is the end time concern of
the Lord which He would put into the heart of an
instrument in relation to His Coming again. A real
concern for the recovery of the fulness of Christ, God's
testimony in Christ to His inclusiveness and fulness.
What, again, is that fulness of Christ? It is the victory
of His death as represented by the altar, the cross. The
victory of Christ's death. We do not enlarge upon that
very much at the moment but we must see that inasmuch as
that altar in Jerusalem was the symbol of deliverance
from, and safety in the presence of the enemies round
about, the cross, the death of the Lord Jesus is the
deliverance of His people from the power of darkness, the
tyranny of the Devil, the forces of evil, and becomes the
ground of their security even when the enemy is raging
round. The death of Christ is our victory. The testimony
to the cross is that in His death He triumphed. The
mighty, mighty power in Christ's death to destroy death
and him that had the power of death, that is the Devil.
We want to let the full weight of that fall upon our
hearts, "...that through death he might destroy him
that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and
deliver them who through fear of death were all their
lifetime subject to bondage". His was a death, a
Satan-destroying death, a delivering death from the power
of the Devil. That is the cross, the altar. We need to
ask the Lord to give us for ourselves the true inward
understanding and knowledge of the power of Christ's
death as the means of deliverance from Satan and death,
and the "fear of death". "...and deliver
them who through fear of death were all their lifetime
subject to bondage". He delivered through death.
That is the first aspect of the fulness of Christ as
revealed in His cross.
Then the
power of His resurrection as represented by the House of
God, or the Body of Christ, because it is the Body of
Christ and the House of God which becomes the repository
of the truth and power of His resurrection. The House is
the result, as we have seen, of the cross. The Body of
Christ comes into being through the cross, as the
immediate issue of the cross, and into that Body He comes
in the power of His resurrection; in the upper room in
resurrection life and power He is found immediately in
the midst. "...came Jesus and stood in the
midst", and that represents for all this
dispensation, the nature of the church. It is that in
which Christ in the power of His resurrection, is
dwelling, is residing. That is Jerusalem. That is the
fulness of Christ as seen in the House.
And then
the testimony of His sufficiency to His people as
represented by the wall. The Lord is sufficient for His
people, and it was at that that Nehemiah was aiming, to
bring the people within the walls and say to them that
the Lord was sufficient for them. And through all the
conflict, all the trial and the difficulties and the
perplexities and the upsettings which are seen in the
course of the reconstructing of that wall, the one
continuous note of optimism, praise and glorying on the
part of Nehemiah was concerning the sufficiency of the
Lord for the whole situation. He inspired the people with
that and so in six months the whole work was finished
because the people had a mind to work. They had that mind
because Nehemiah inspired them with his own confidence in
the Lord's sufficiency, and all without came to recognise
that those they had called "these feeble Jews"
had got a resource of fulness which was more than that of
men, the fulness of the Lord; and that was the testimony
outward to the fulness of Christ.
So Ezra
and Nehemiah recovered typically, that which represented
the fulness of Christ. And we apply that of course to see
that that is what the Lord is seeking to do at an end
time. Always the recovery is more difficult than the
original constructing. When a thing has been lost it is
always more difficult to get it back than it was to
originally establish it. We come to the book of the Acts
and we see the thing coming in in life, spontaneously, in
power. It was withstood, it was fought against, but there
it stood in all its original glory and power and
splendour. But it has been lost, and to recover always
represents a very much greater task. So we find this book
represents the difficulty of recovery. We are coming to
see what those difficulties are in a moment. And then,
recovery is not only marked by difficulties which are
natural to a loss of position, but the recovery is also
fraught with the opposition of every conceivable satanic
device. If the Devil was behind the loss of the testimony
we may be quite sure he will withstand its recovery with
every means at his command. These are the two things
which come up so fully in the book of Nehemiah: the
difficulties of recovery from the inside and the
withstanding of the enemy from the outside.
Let us
look at some of these difficulties, the difficulties of
recovery. There is one phrase which indicates an initial
difficulty for Nehemiah. As he went round in his secret
personal investigation by night, having told no one,
personally and secretly exercising himself over this
whole matter, one phrase which is used about the
situation is this: "...there is much rubbish",
and that is always a characteristic of recovery. You do
not have that in the same sense in the original setting
up or constituting, you have more or less a clear way for
your new thing, but when it is renewing a thing you find
that in the meantime a good deal of rubbish has
accumulated, and in the place where the wall once was,
now there is much rubbish. And remember that that wall
stands to represent the clear definition of what is of
God and what is not of God. It defines the point where
what is of God ends and what is not of God begins, but it
is a clear mark by division. Now when Nehemiah came to
the place which was once marked so definitely, so
precisely, so clearly and you could say: "God's
things end there, and the world's things begin there, and
that wall divides between clearly", that very place
which was once the clear mark of definition and division
and separation has on it all kinds of rubbish. That is,
the clear definition has gone, you do not know where what
is of God's things end and what is of the world begins.
There is such an overlapping and intermixture, such a
confusion, such a mess that the clear definition is lost.
"...much rubbish". It might be dangerous to try
and apply that exhaustively - but man, even religiously,
has put a very good deal upon what once represented God's
clear line of demarcation that even Christian people do
not know where they are today. Man has constructed his
own interpretations of Christianity and of truth, brought
in his own systems and has confused things so much that
you really do not know unless you have clear discernment
such as Nehemiah had, what is of God and what is not of
God. There are multitudes of good, honest, sincere
Christian people who really are in the most awful fog as
to what is of God and what is not of God religiously.
Man's religious systems have brought about that confusion
and multitudes of honest people believe with all their
heart that the thing that they are in is of God, and it
is just possible for them to get such an awakening to see
the whole thing was man-made and not of God at all.
"...much rubbish". Paul was one of those.
Reflect upon his past life, privileges, inheritances
which he at one time believed were so utterly and
absolutely of God, for him, and that he really was in
God's will. He came to a time and he said: "The
things which were gain to me, those I counted loss for
Christ". "...for whom I suffered the loss of
all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain
Christ"; and yet he was so devoted to all that as a
traditional religious system in which he at one time was
living as out from God, which had now become merely an
outward thing of forms and external laws. He believed,
nevertheless, that it was all of God until the light
shone, until he saw that in comparison with the fulness
of Christ it was refuse. It is a strong word that he
uses; the word he uses is "stuff to be flung to the
dogs". Saul of Tarsus throwing his Judaism to the
dogs! He did it when he saw Christ. You can never come
out of the rubbish until you see Christ. Ask the Lord to
reveal to you the fulness of Christ and you will find
things which have gripped and held you become as mere
refuse, stuff to be flung to the dogs. There was much
rubbish in the place which once represented a clear line
of division between what was of God and what was not of
God; confusion, mixture. I shall not attempt to apply
that more thoroughly. The Lord will have to show us by
revelation, what the rubbish is, but there is the simple
statement and it contains a truth, and you and I will
really have to ask the Lord to show us even in religious
matters, where man ends and God begins, or where God ends
and man begins, so that we shall be delivered from
everything that man has imposed or added upon what is of
God, and we shall be able to get right down to
foundations, the rubbish being removed: and there is a
very great deal of ecclesiastical rubbish about in these
days that must go. That is a real difficulty in
recovering the full testimony of the Lord Jesus. It is
the longstanding systems of man religiously, the
traditions of men, that which man has brought into
Christianity and said: "This is of God". To get
a full testimony to the Lord Jesus you come up against
that very truly and very severely, and you find that
people are met with the great obstruction of their
inheritances and their acceptances before they can get
right into the fulness of the Lord Jesus. It takes a long
time to clear that rubbish away - it does.
Then the
second thing was their past history which would tend to
be a ground of great discouragement, even despair, and
throw them into a state of inertia, paralysis. They would
look back over the past and they would say: "Yes,
the good old days, they will never come back, we cannot
expect to have things again as they were; they are gone
for ever." "What is the good of trying to
recover?" You find plenty of people today who, in
the face of a divinely inspired effort to recover the
fulness of the testimony of Christ in His Body, will say:
"Oh yes, but there have been many things like that
in the past centuries, a good many people have tried that
and it has always failed". "So-and-so led a
movement like that, and another time there was another
thing that said that was its object, and there have been
plenty of attempts along that line but history shows they
do not succeed and one after another they break down;
what is the good?" You see there is a history, and a
bad history of the church, and there are plenty of people
today who fall into despair and say: "Well, the only
thing is for us to live as individual believers and never
have anything corporate, and try and be personally
faithful to the Lord". That is a counsel of despair.
It is quite contrary to the Lord, that. We are not
thinking of a great world movement, of a great public
thing, but if it can only be in a company of a dozen that
the Lord has some real fulness of realization of His end,
that is the contradiction to all these counsels of
despair, and that is God's answer to the work of the
Devil. And do you think that it is right for us to sit
down and tell the Lord that He started to do a thing and
the whole thing has been spoiled and it is no use Him
trying to do it? "Lord, at the beginning Your plan,
Your way was to have Your full thought and desire as
represented by little companies here and there; things
went wrong, Your object was spoiled, the Devil came in
and upset it, and it is quite impossible for You to
realize any such idea or ideal." Are you prepared to
thrust that upon the Lord? Not a bit. Nehemiah will not
accept that, and Nehemiah represents the spirit of an end
time movement and says: "Well, if it only be in a
small company here and there and somewhere else, God can
have that which satisfies His heart, and if God's heart
satisfaction is to be realized in that way then it is our
business and we must not be discouraged by past
history." We recall movements in past days which
were great movements, blessed movements and represented
something very rich for the Lord and then were upset and
arrested and so we say: "Well, it is no use our
attempting anything, the same result will follow."
That is contrary to the spirit of Nehemiah. A Nehemiah
instrument repudiates all such arguments and counsels,
and says: "Although the thing has failed a thousand
times, God is still able to do that upon which He has set
His heart" - and the answer at long last to all the
work of the Devil, will be that God has that which He has
set His heart upon. God cannot be defeated. When you and
I get to glory and we see what God has got there, we
shall say: "This is that upon which the Lord set His
heart; here it is..." "It seemed to us as
though it had become non-existent and quite impossible;
it looked to us as though the enemy had destroyed the
whole thing - but here it is." God will answer the
whole works of the Devil and have finally that which He
has set his heart upon. Are we with Him in that faith and
confidence? What He will have at long last, He can have
at least in a measure now in small representations here
and there, His own desire and thought. The conditions are
such that if you listen to the pessimist you will never
attempt anything along that line; if you listen to those
who talk of "the good old days" which can never
come again, you will be paralysed.
The third
difficulty - men in the flesh are so much in possession.
Men in the flesh have taken possession of the Lord's
territory and the Lord's things. Do we not find ourselves
up against difficulties like that? The difficulty of
religious vested interests of so many people; their
office and their position and their reputation and their
name and their a thousand other things. Man has got in
God's way and in God's place, and so you find yourself up
against those personal interests of so many people in the
work of the Lord, that the recovery of the full testimony
of the Lord Jesus is made exceedingly difficult. Nehemiah
found that.
We see the
conditions in this book were that there were those there
who had taken possession and who had position and they
arrested the activities of Nehemiah, the nobles and
others. Well now, we come up against that thing. You are
out to have something which is wholly of the Lord and you
find people in the way, men and women in the flesh making
difficulties. The necessity so often is for the Lord to
break the man or to put them out. Is not that the
difficulty? They have got hold, they are running this
thing, this is their work, it circles round them, they
were the founders of it and it lives and it dies with
them. Now if you want something of the universality of
Christ, the pre-eminence of Christ, which has no place
for man but which place is wholly occupied by the Lord
Jesus, either those men and women in the flesh have got
to be smashed, ground to powder, or else the Lord has got
to put them out or else He can do nothing - and that is a
difficulty always in recovery.
And the
fourth thing was the impoverishment of the Lord's people:
the domination of the world. Nehemiah found such an
impoverishment amongst the people at Jerusalem. That
represented for him a very great difficulty to recover
the testimony. We have referred to the domination of the
world, and therefore, the resultant impoverishment of the
Lord's people. These two things always go together. We
know it from experience, that if the world has a place in
our lives, or in what is called the church, spiritual
impoverishment will be found there, spiritual poverty.
When the world is ruled out absolutely and Christ is all
and in all, there are always the riches of Christ, there
is always the means of God to carry on. We have often
said that when we go down to Egypt the Lord lets us take
the responsibility for carrying things on. When we
repudiate Egypt and put our confidence in the Lord and
make Him our resource He takes the responsibility for
carrying on. And that is a testimony true to life. We,
without any boasting at all, or rejoicing or glorying in
the flesh, are able to bear our witness very, very
definitely to that. There was a time in our history when
we went down into Egypt, when we had to draw our
resources from the world to carry on what we called the
church work. There was a blessed time in our history when
the Lord gave us to repudiate Egypt and to stop the whole
programme of appeals to the world along any line
whatever, and turn to Him and give Him His place, and
from that day to this He has supported us and carried on,
and we have lacked nothing; but more, we are a constant
amazement to others as to where the resources come from.
That is no boast in the flesh, I do not want it to sound
like that; it is a testimony, and it is given to
reinforce the truth of what we are saying. The ability
which the Lord gives to do much more for others when He
has His full place is amazing. Then you are not going cap
in hand to the world, you have got something to give to
the world, you have the knowledge of the fulness of
Christ and your walls are up, your testimony outward is
established and you need not draw from the world for
anything, but you have got something to give to the world
and the world is in poverty in comparison. But here was
impoverishment because the Lord had not His full place
and the walls were down. But that is a difficulty always.
We have
not touched the satanic side of this recovery but we can
leave that till later. The Lord just give us that clear
perception, apprehension to see what His thought is and
to have the positive note. I feel that we need to
recognise the value of a positive note. We are not going
to denounce this and that and have the negative note all
the time, we must have that positive side of things that
because we have got what we have, by sheer comparison
others may be compelled to see that their position is not
a right one. Not because we say they are wrong, not
because we are always preaching that they are wrong but
because they have to see without anything that may come
from our lips, that we have got the secret. That is the
way of effectiveness. We have got the secret, and the
secret is the Lord Himself. May the Lord lead us into His
fulness, the fulness of Christ our full satisfaction.
First published in "Golden Candlestick" magazine, Vol 122, from previously unpublished manuscripts.